Sustainable construction and design take in a built asset's economic, environmental, ethical and social impacts over its lifetime. It emphasizes sustainable performance at every juncture, from asset design to end-of-life activities. Sustainable specifications encompass the responsible selection of:
In this article, we look at sustainable design and specification through the lens of UN Sustainability Goals 03, 08 and 11.
Goal 03 promotes healthier lives and well-being for everyone at every age. It aims to create strategies, environments, and social spaces that address issues proactively rather than relying on reactive responses.
While much of this goal feels related to things outside of our industry, you can address a variety of elements via the built environment, including:
A few considerations you may want to take on board include:
The most successful sustainable outcomes happen when engagement begins early in the project. Educating and having the client on board with your vision is fundamental to achieving this.
BREEAM also encourages and awards recognition credits for spaces that ensure adequate airflow. This includes naturally ventilated areas and mixed-modelled and air-conditioned spaces where achieving natural ventilation is difficult.
Goal 08 has two elements – decent work and economic growth, with the decent work element focusing on things such as:
To meet this goal, it is your responsibility to:
During concept design and spatial coordination, you should look at:
It is beneficial to take a proactive approach from RIBA Plan of Work Stage 0 and use preliminaries to determine things like:
By doing it this way, you can set out general requirements, define minimum contract requirements for safety and environmental protection, address health and safety issues, and identify and eliminate threats to a safe working environment.
The primary purpose of Goal 11 is to ensure that the spaces where humans dwell are resilient, safe, inclusive and sustainable.
As construction professionals, it is our responsibility to do our best to ensure we are taking part in:
This goal also aims to:
Retrofitting and refurbishment are vital for reducing our sector's negative impact. After all, the more sustainable building is the one that already exists.
Multiple systems fall under retrofitting, so consider how you can improve a building's energy efficiency when determining how to specify for sustainability. Define materials reuse and recycling via preliminaries and determine what existing materials can be retained or reused to reduce embodied energy. Also, consider incorporating sustainable design to improve the building's performance via external wall insulation systems, photovoltaics, solar heating, etc.
For anyone wanting to go beyond third-party rating schemes, use preliminaries to set your project's specific sustainability performance requirements, carbon mission targets, etc. While high-efficiency envelopes like Fabric First, Active House, Passivhaus (Passive House), etc., can incur higher initial construction costs, they can significantly reduce or eliminate fuel poverty via long-term running cost production. By combining multiple approaches, you can design for both comfort and sustainability.
Using renewable materials can reduce embodied carbon compared to using other energy-intensive materials. Sourcing locally whenever possible also has a significant impact. For instance, thatch materials are both renewable and typically locally sourced. However, when using thatch, fire risks need to be carefully considered.
Other renewable materials examples include:
Numerous sustainable alternatives to traditional plastic-based insulations exist, including sheep's wool, recycled paper, expanded cork (to BS EN 13170), cotton fibre matt, and hemp fibre.
Biodiversity is an integral part of the built environment's overall sustainability strategy; addressing it through design and specification can significantly and positively impact our work. Some of the things you should be considering include:
When specifying how a site should be managed for biodiversity and visual interest, objectives can include providing wildlife habitats, managing locally native species and/ or controlling invasive species.
Light pollution is a major environmental issue related to external lighting. Undesirable effects created by light pollution include:
You should carefully weigh the effects of lighting design and product choices against their potential negative impact. Ask yourself:
Along with other mitigating measures, SuDs can help to partially address flooding during severe rainstorms using swales and wetland systems. You can also use permeable paving systems to dispose of rainwater locally instead of having it collected into mains drainage, which can significantly reduce the effect of flash flooding and drought.
During a project's initial stages, consider people's current disabilities, those they may have had at one point, and those they might have in the future. Designing for inclusivity can take numerous forms. For example, accessible toilet accommodations that comply with Building Regulations guidance for non-domestic buildings. By addressing accessibility at a whole project level, you can define high-level requirements for accessibility within the project for people with disabilities, including car parking and sanitary facilities, etc. Types of disabilities to consider include:
Typically, creating inclusivity requires careful attention to what separate components are being specified (often by proprietary reference). Consider:
Also, the external built environment and the spaces around and between buildings should be considered to ensure they are inclusive and meet all users' needs.
While not always obvious, many ways exist to incorporate sustainable community and social value goals into the built environment. This can be via inclusive design (above) that considers accessibility and issues like neurodiversity (i.e., factoring in light and noise levels for autistic comfort) or from other means, like outdoor shelters, which can include structures like:
Shelters can significantly contribute to safe cycling and other means of transportation when strategically placed to be safe and accessible at critical locations where people work, play and live.
This article is based on Part One of the Sustainable Specification Guides, created for NBS Chorus customers looking to specify sustainability. The guide itself covers much more and includes Chorus-specific specification examples for reference. You can find the guides on the NBS website.
It is important to note that if you are interested in NBS Chorus, it does include CIS links within its guidance content so that you can easily access related standards and regulations via your CIS subscription. The NBS website provides more information.
The NBS Sustainable Specification Guides are a collaborative effort that relies heavily on our Technical Authoring Team's expertise. Primary contributing authors include Technical Content Editor Anna Dekker, who also specializes in landscaping and biodiversity, Senior Technical Author James Smith, and Senior Technical Author Stephen Surtees.
In case you missed them, other recently highlighted NBS articles include:
Also of possible interest is The Building Safety Act and specification, written by Senior Technical Author James Smith.